European Age Group Triathlon Champs - Lisbon

Last year's 4th place at the Europeans in Copenhagen and the subsequent realisation that I had only lost out on a medal by 20 or so seconds, my main aim was to go back to the Europeans and get myself a medal. This year they took place in Lisbon and the course seemed to be quite well suited to my style of racing. I arrived in Lisbon on the back of a few good results this season, so I knew that I was fit, I just hoped that the distance of the race would not come as too much of a shock - I had only really done some shorter distance stuff this season.

Anyway, my 30-34 age group was much bigger than last year, with over 120 athletes racing, so I knew from the start that I was going to need to push hard, especially against the large contingent of local Portugese athletes who probably had more experience of the course.

When we eventually got underway, I was instantly reminded of how tough the swim starts can be. With 120 athletes all swimming at pretty much the same pace, you can't help but get the odd mouthful of salty water and the odd kick etc. The turns at each of the buoys were also pretty frantic with arms and legs going everywhere. For the last 500m, I managed to find a pack who I could have swam faster than, but I decided to hang in behind them to get the draft and then hopefully save some energy for the bike and run. I was out the water in 20:44 and was pretty pleased with that as I think that I was pretty much in the second pack, albeit, I had lost over 2 minutes to the leaders.







Before I had left the UK, I had done some research on the bike course for this race and I was pleased to have seen that the course was pretty much flat the whole way round. However, having now done the course, I can confirm that is not the case. Yes, a lot of the course is pretty flat, but I never realised that there would be an energy sapping long climb at the turn point for each of the two laps. Going up, I was struggling in a small gear...the upside though was that I was able to come back down the other side doing over 75kph...quite scary on the wet roads. Overall, the course was good and I did enjoy the bike section. I worked damn hard to reel in all of my wave and eventually caught last year's gold medal winner after about 20k. He held on for about 10k and then on the last stretch, I managed to pull away. This now meant that I came back into T2 in the gold medal position, with the fastest bike split for everyone who raced that day, including all the other age groups. (1:06:42 for the 45k course).





The problem, and the lesson that I will never learn, with going all out on the bike is that your legs tend to feel a bit worse for wear when you start the run. This is pretty much the tale of my triathlon career, but, in my defense, it has worked quite well at times. But, in Lisbon, it was pretty bad, probably made worse by the small number of brick sessions that I had done this season. I started off slow, got a bit faster and then slowed back down again to come home in a bit under 39 minutes for the 10k. The eventual winner had come past me at 3k and from then on, it was just a case of trying to hold on and hoping that no one else in my age group came past me. Alas, at the end of the day it all went well and I managed to hold on to second by the skin of my teeth...a mere 4 seconds I think.


















At the time, you are never sure if you have actually done it as there is no one at the finish to confirm where you have come. So, what followed the finish was a long ol wait to see if I had finished where I thought I had. Finally, just before the awards ceremony, I managed to get my hands on a set of results and it was true, I had the silver!